Sehrabandi / سہرا بندی

"Sehrabandi"( سہرا بندی) is a poetic and playful portrait of old Lahore through the prism of a vanishing tradition and the people who breathe life into the city.

A Sehra is a headdress worn by the groom during Pakistani weddings to ward off the evil eye. A 'sehra' is also a poem in praise of the groom wishing him a happy and prosperous life.

Seduced by its visual beauty & social symbolism, I went to meet the workers, shopkeepers and inhabitants engaged in their daily tasks and invited them into a moment of fiction within their reality.

Paradoxically, while their faces disappeared under a veil of roses, their presence was made more visible within the bustling texture of Lahore. Without a face, the language of bodies tells many stories.

What these images do not conney is the glorious fragrance of the roses.